In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Renaissance Italy enchants in Dunant's delicious second historical (after The Birth of Venus ), as a wily dwarf Bucino Teodoldo recounts fantastic escapades with his mistress, celebrated courtesan Fiammetta Bianchini. Escaping the 1527 sacking of Rome with just the clothes on their backs (and a few swallowed jewels in their bellies), Fiammetta and Bucino seek refuge in Venice. Starved, stinking, her beauty destroyed, Fiammetta despairs—but through cunning, will, Bucino's indefatigable loyalty and the magic of a mysterious blind healer called La Draga, she eventually recovers. Aided by a former adversary, who now needs her as much as she needs him, Fiammetta finds a wealthy patron to establish her in her familiar glory. Through Bucino's sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued narration, Dunant crafts a vivid vision of Venetian life: the weave of politics and religion; the layers of class; the rituals, intrigue, superstitions and betrayals. Dunant's characters—the steely courtesan whose glimpse of true love nearly brings her to ruin; the shrewd and passionate dwarf who turns his abnormalities into triumph; and the healer whose mysterious powers and secrets leave an indelible mark on the duo—are irresistible throughout their shifting fortunes. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The New Yorker Dunant's latest historical romp follows the fortunes of a beautiful, flame-haired courtesan, Fiammetta Bianchini, who, after escaping from the 1527 pillage of Rome, sets up shop in Venice. The novel, narrated by Fiammetta's servant, a dwarf, chronicles the pair's horrific scrapes and their dizzying triumphs, which include Fiammetta's becoming Titian's model for his "Venus of Urbino." Along the way, Dunant presents a lively and detailed acccount of the glimmering palaces and murky alleys of Renaissance Venice, and examines the way the city's clerics and prostitutes alike are bound by its peculiar dynamic of opulence and restraint. Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker From Bookmarks Magazine Her debut novel, The Birth of Venus , explored 15th-century Florence; Sarah Dunant's latest offeringx97what USA Today calls "both a business thriller and a historical love story"x97delves into 16th-century Venice. Dunant paints a remarkable portrait of Venice, from its corruption to its class tensions, filthy ghettos and mansions, and virtues and vices. Critics fell in love with the deformed Bucino, an intimate, tender companion with a deep bond to Fiammetta. A few quibbles: the dearth of explicit sex scenes titillated some critics while disappointing others, and a few complained that Dunant's descriptive prowess overwhelmed a meandering plot. The novel is worth a read, however, simply for its rich set pieces. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. From Booklist *Starred Review* Following The Birth of Venus (2004), Dunant offers another lush and intelligent piece of historical fiction. The courtesan of the title, Fiammetta, has flourished in Rome, as have members of her household, including the dwarf Bucino. When Rome is sacked by German and Spanish troops in 1527, Fiammetta and Bucino flee to Venice and begin an arduous climb from dire need back to prosperity by reinventing Fiammetta's career. The ministrations of La Draga, a young blind woman who has mysterious powers, aid in the recovery. But is La Draga a true friend or an enemy? Dunant's portrait of Renaissance Venice--its life high and low, its sights, sounds, smells, and even some of its historical inhabitants (Titian being one)--is intoxicating, made even more compelling by the fact that we see it through the eyes of an unusually acute observer. The narrator, Bucino, plays the part of comrade, manager, servant, and exotic toy as the occasion demands, and his complicated relationship with Fiammetta is the heart of the book. Dunant is the kind of writer a reader will follow anywhere, trusting completely in her ability both to bring a time and place to life and to tell an enthralling story. Mary Ellen Quinn Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Sarah Dunant has written eight novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Birth of Venus , and edited two books of essays. She has worked widely in print, television, and radio, and is now a full-time writer. Dunant has two children and lives in London and Florence. To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com From The Washington Post In London, the old coconut of whether Queen Elizabeth I remained virginal is back on the dinner-party circuit, thanks to a recent television series helpfully called "The Virgin Queen." Elizabeth's sexual behavior takes our fancy more than her polylingual scholarship and statesmanship. Then, too, there's Memoirs of a Geisha topping all the lists again. Lifting up long skirts to see what is (or isn't) going on beneath has become an obsession even in the most cultured circles. I am not indifferent to a novel where sex is the theme but sexual acts are scarcely described. It's still titillating, and readers know the score. Such tales bypass that wincing, coital prose that guarantees to propel you into a carnal fantasy with the author photo but is often so garishly embarrassing that one sees disco lights instead of letters on the page. So Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan takes us straight to a powdered, costumed world, heady with the reek of ruffs and fur, heightened by vocabulary frank with prick and itch, but where the focus is on sexual collusion rather than descriptions of collisions. We are in the company of a very successful courtesan, Fiammetta Bianchini, a lustrous 25-year-old with waist-length blonde hair and emerald-green eyes. The narrator is Fiammetta's clever pimp, Bucino, a hideous dwarf afflicted with painful legs. It is Rome, 1527. The great city is being sacked by murdering, raping Spaniards and Germans. By entertaining the marauders, Fiammetta and Bucino narrowly escape the bloodbath and flee to Venice, with just some jewels and a valuable book. But Fiammetta's magnificent hair has been hacked off by jealous soldiers' women, her head horribly scarred in the process. There is no chance of working again in a trade dependent on youth and beauty, until her charms can be restored -- by any means whatever. In Venice, the story unfolds. The cast of characters is tied into its chronological place with a few real people: notably the artist Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), the scurrilo us poet Pietro Aretino and a female quack, known as La Draga, whose fainter historical footprint provides Dunant with the jumping-off point for her third principal player. Blind and crippled, La Draga fixes up Fiammetta with blonde hair extensions and nurses her to health -- after which it is straight back to bed and business, in double-quick time. Naturally, there are twists and turns along the route to the top, but Bucino and Fiammetta overcome various travails to end up with a successful whorehouse in a fine palazzo and a rigorous appointment book of rich and powerful men, including the Doge. Yet, for a courtesan, the gilded pinnacle of success can only be a pivot to the beginning of inevitable decline. Meanwhile, Dunant explores and enjoys Venice. And it is Venice that captivates her most and on which she concentrates her powerful descriptive talent. While the story meanders like the canals, throwing up the odd dead end, Dunant uses research and observation to conjure up a sharp city: its dank stinking waterways, its cruel nobility and harsh laws, its fabric of stone mansions and sumpy ghettos, its glittering, gleaming, sparkling, sly and silky water. "In the waxy, pale light," she writes, "the buildings on either side grew grander, like ghost palaces, three or four stories tall, their entrances low, a few stone steps all that separated them from the slapping sea. In some, the great doors stood open onto cavernous halls with rows of the slim-hipped boats tied up outside, their silvery prows glinting under an occasional lamp." Dunant explores her characters equally well. At the height of Fiammetta's regained fame and prosperity, she makes what Bucino considers the desperate mistake of falling in love. Worse, it is with the 17-year-old son of a noble family; he does not pay for sex, thus undermining business protocol and driving a hard wedge between Bucino, who has always kept a level head, and Fiammetta, who, after a diet of paunchy, wallet-bearing punters, is amenable to firm, fr esh flesh. Out of a confrontation over this matter, the true depth of this odd couple's relationship develops. The novel's plot is not particularly tight, but there are some great set-pieces, notably a muscular and violent battle between the Arsenale workers and the Nicoletti fishermen. Otherwise, this amiable, intelligent story ambles along pretty much of its own accord, toward a good surprise at the end. -- Philippa Stockley is the author of "A Factory of Cunning" and "The Edge of Pleasure." Reviewed by Philippa Stockley Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. chapter one Rome, 1527 My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment. Italy was a living chessboard for the ambitions of half of Europe in those days. The threat of war was as regular as the harvest, alliances made in winter were broken by spring, and there were places where women bore another child by a different invading father every other year. In the great and glorious city of Rome, we had grown soft living under God’s protection, but such was the instability of the times that even the holiest of fathers made unholy alliances, and a pope with Medici blood in his veins was always more prone to politics than to prayer. In the last few days before the horror struck, Rome still couldn’t bring herself to believe that her destruction was nigh. Rumors crept like bad smells through the streets. The stonemasons shoring up the city walls told of a mighty army of Spaniards, their savagery honed on the barbarians of the New World, swelled with cohorts of German Lutherans fueled on the juices of the nuns they had raped on their journey south. Yet when the Roman defense led by the nobleman Renzo de Ceri marched through the town touting for volunteers for the barricades, these same bloodthirsty giants became half-dead men marching on their knees, their assholes close to the ground to dispel all the rotting food and bad wine they had guzzled on the way. In this version, the enemy was so pathetic that,\ even were the soldiers to find the strength to lift their guns, they had no artillery to help them, and with enough stalwart Romans on the battlements, we could drown them in our piss and mockery as they tried to scale their way upward. The joys of war always talk better than they play; still, the prospect of a battle won by urine and bravura was enticing enough to attract a few adventurers with nothing to lose, including our stable boy, who left the next afternoon. Two days later, the army arrived at the gates and my lady sent me to get him back. On the evening streets, our louche, loud city had closed up like a clam. Those with enough money had already bought their own private armies, leaving the rest to make do with locked doors and badly boarded windows. While my gait is small and bandied, I have always had a homing pigeon’s sense of direction, and for all its twists and turns, Rome had long been mapped inside my head. My lady entertained a client once, a merchant captain who mistook my deformity for a sign of God’s special grace and who promised me a fortune if I could find him a way to the Indies across the open sea. But I was born with a recurring nightmare of a great bird picking me up in its claws and dropping me into an empty ocean, and for that, and other reasons, I have always been afraid of water. As the walls came into sight, I could see neither lookouts nor sentries. Until now we had never had need of such things, our rambling fortifications being more for the delight of antiquarians than for generals. I clambered up by way of one of the side towers, my thighs thrumming from the deep tread of the steps, and stood for a moment catching my breath. Along the stone corridor of the battlement, two figures were slouched down against the wall. Above me, above them, I could make out a low wave of moaning, like the murmur of a congregation at litany in church. In that moment my need to know became greater than my terror of finding out, and I hauled myself up over uneven and broken stones as best I could until I had a glimpse above the top. Below me, as far as the eye could see, a great plain of darkness stretched out, spiked by hundreds of flickering candles. The moaning rolled like a slow wind through the night, the sound of an army joined in prayer or talking to itself in its sleep. Until then I think even I had colluded in the myth of our invincibility. Now I knew how the Trojans must have felt as they looked down from their walls and saw the Greeks camped before them, the promise of revenge glinting off their polished shields in the moonlight. Fear spiked my gut as I scrambled back down onto the battlement, and in a fury I went to kick the sleeping sentries awake. Close to, their hoods became cowls, and I made out two young monks, barely old enough to tie their own tassels, their faces pasty and drawn. I drew myself to my full height and squared up to the first, pushing my face into his. He opened his eyes and yelled, thinking that the enemy had sent a fatheaded, smiling devil out of Hell for him early. His panic roused his companion. I put my fingers to my lips and grinned again. This time they both squealed. I’ve had my fair share of pleasure from scaring clerics, but at that moment I wished that they had more courage to resist me. A hungry Lutheran would have had them split on his bayonet before they might say Dominus vobiscum. They crossed themselves frantically and, when I questioned them, waved me on toward the gate at San Spirito, where, they said, the defense was stronger. The only strategy I have perfected in life is one to keep my belly full, but even I knew that San Spirito was where the city was at its most vulnerable, with Cardinal Armellini’s vineyards reaching to the battlements and a farmhouse built up and into the very stones of the wall itself. Our army, such as it was when I found it, was huddled in clumps around the building. A couple of makeshift sentries tried to stop me, but I told them I was there to join the fight, and they laughed so hard they let me through, one of them aiding me along with a kick that missed my rear by a mile. In the camp, half the men were stupid with terror, the other half stupid with drink. I never did find the stable boy, but what I saw instead convinced me that a single breach here and Rome would open up as easily as a wife’s legs to her handsome neighbor. Back home, I found my mistress awake in her bedroom, and I told her all I had seen. She listened carefully, as she always did. We talked for a while, and then, as the night folded around us, we fell silent, our minds slipping away from our present life, filled with the warmth of wealth and security, toward the horrors of a future that we could barely imagine. By the time the attack came, at first light, we were already at work. I had roused the servants before dawn, and my lady had instructed them to lay the great table in the gold room, giving orders to the cook to slaughter the fattest of the pigs and start preparing a banquet the likes of which were usually reserved for cardinals or bankers. While there were mutterings of dissent, such was her authority—or possibly their desperation—that any plan seemed comforting at the moment, even one that appeared to make no sense. The house had already been stripped of its more ostentatious wealth: the great agate vases, the silver plates, the majolica dishes, the gilded crystal Murano drinking glasses, and the best linens had all been stowed away three or four days before, wrapped first inside the embroidered silk hangings, then the heavy Flemish tapestries, and packed into two chests. The smaller one was so ornate with gilt and wood marquetry that it had to be covered again with burlap to save it from the damp. It had taken the cook, the stable boy, and both of the twins to drag the chests into the yard, where a great hole had been dug under the flagstones close to the servants’ latrines. When they were buried and covered with a blanket of fresh feces (fear is an excellent loosener of the bowels), we let out the five pigs, bought at a greatly inflated price a few days earlier, and they rolled and kicked their way around, grunting their delight as only pigs can do in shit. With all trace of the valuables gone, my lady had taken her great necklace—the one she had worn to the party at the Strozzi house, where the rooms had been lit by skeletons with candles in their ribs and the wine, many swore afterward, had been as rich and thick as blood—and to every servant she had given two fat pearls. The remaining ones she told them were theirs for the dividing if the chests were found unopened when the worst was over. Loyalty is a commodity that grows more expensive when times get bloody, and as an employer Fiammetta Bianchini was as much loved as she was feared, and in this way she cleverly pitted each man as much against himself as against her. As to where she had hidden the rest of her jewelry, well, that she did not reveal. What remained after this was done was a modest house of modest wealth with a smattering of ornaments, two lutes, a pious Madonna in the bedroom, and a wood panel of fleshy nymphs in the salon, decoration sufficient to the fact of her dubious profession but without the stench of excess many of our neighbors’ palazzi emitted. Indeed, a few hours later, as a great cry went up and the church bells began to chime, each one coming fast on the other, telling us that our defenses had been penetrated, the only aroma from our house was that of slow-roasting pig, growing succulent in its own juices. Those who lived to tell the tale spoke with a kind of awe of that first breach of the walls; of how, as the fighting got fiercer with the day, a fog had crept up from the marshes behind the enemy lines, thick and gloomy as broth, enveloping the massing attackers below so that our defense force couldn’t fire down on them accurately until, like an army of ghosts roaring out of the mist, they were already upon us. After that, whatever courage we might have found... Read more